The festival that celebrates what could be Sydney's most loved handheld meal is making its meaty return.

Billed as Australia’s largest burger festival, Burgerpalooza is back for a third year, bringing eight of the city’s best purveyors of burgers to a new venue – Parramatta’s Prince Alfred Square.

The event on September 22 and 23 will feature BL Burgers, Down N’ Out, Mister Gee’s, Burger Head and Superior Burger, all making their return festival appearance. And for the first time, Ume Burger, Chef’s Kitchen and Hardstyle Kitchen will be there.

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“Everyone’s designing a burger especially for the festival,” Ben Kagan, co-director of Burgapalooza, told Broadsheet, adding that most retailers will also be providing a vegetarian option.

The 2018 event, hosted by Menulog, won’t be exactly the same as previous festivals. The coupon system has been canned and retailers will accept cards and cash. And instead of vendors making smaller versions of their burgers so punters can try more options, they’ll be selling “normal-sized” ones uniformly priced at $15 each.

The notorious chilli-eating competition will be reprised in 2018. It’s presented by Tabasco, which as well as celebrating its 150-year birthday this year will be providing the fiery condiment for free to punters looking to add some burn to their burg.

The festival will have live art, music, stand-up comedy and family-friendly activities such as face painting. Organisers are keeping tight-lipped on a new space they will roll out at the festival – an area they say promises to “help alleviate the stress of being too full, but wanting to eat more burgers". We interpret that as: somewhere you can recover from your food coma.

Burgapalooza is on September 22 and 23 at Prince Alfred Square, Parramatta.

burgapalooza.com.au